Running your business often means starting work early in the mornings, working evenings and the occasional Saturday and Sunday. Wouldn’t you like to cut back this year, ease up a little, maybe take a few Friday afternoons off or get away on vacation this summer? How can you do this and at the same time build marketing momentum?

You know that you could expand your business if your marketing was more effective, but you barely have time to keep up with your present workload, much less take on a whole new set of business marketing ideas and tasks.

How can you take your small business to the next level and work less this year?

The secret of course is in the 80/20 rule. For most people 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your efforts. Now imagine you knew where to focus your time so it consistently helped you to get results. You could easily increase your sales by a factor of five.

In marketing most people are using the equivalent of smoke signals or Morse code. They’re using outdated marketing ideas and strategies.

Instead of using a marketing system they’re using bits and pieces.
That’s like trying to go somewhere in a car without an engine. It might look good sitting in your driveway but it certainly won’t get you where you want to go.

If you’re struggling to grow your business the solution is simple. Use a proven marketing system, one that can put your marketing in gear and help you achieve your goals.

Ready to finally discover how to make more and work less? Use this link to get the details >>

3 Ways to Reach Your Business Goals

1. Plan To Get More Done With Less Effort
If you want to make better use of your time start by setting aside time each week get the knowledge you need and to implement the proven marketing ideas you get. Make room for continuous improvement on your agenda.

Take out your calendar and block out an hour once a week, preferably first thing in the morning, when you’ll give yourself a mental vacation from meetings, answering the phone, and email. Use this time to evaluate your current efforts. It’s like stepping the scale each day.

Identify what to do more of, what to change and where to get help.
- What’s working and what isn’t?

- Where are you getting the best results?

- Which keywords are attracting the most prospects?

- Which marketing messages?

- What sequence of information results in the highest conversion rates?

- What follow-up strategy is working?
Etc.

If you keep managing and marketing your business the same way, what do you think will happen? You’ll get the same results. If you want a breakthrough you’re going to need to make a change and more from piecemeal marketing to using a proven marketing system. Interested?

Use this link to discover how to make more, work less and achieve your goals >>

2. Get More Attention With Less Effort
A common misconception is that marketing success is a result of plain old persistence. Most people think that using the same type of marketing message and advertising that everyone else uses will build their “brand” or grow their business.

Is using the same approach your competitors use helping you get all the attention you want for your business? Probably not.

Your marketing message is the first place to start. Replace it with a message that clearly and succinctly explains how you help your clients. Prospects respond when you speak to their needs.

On average, my clients report that composing and using a client focused marketing message increases their response rate by 400 percent. That’s 4 times as many leads generated with the same effort.

3. Generate More Qualified Leads and Sales with Less Effort
Getting attention is the first step in marketing; getting qualified prospects the second. You want more prospects so you can convert them to clients and increase sales, but you don’t have time to make more calls or write more emails or letters. But you can get more people to contact you and buy from you each month and reduce your long-term marketing costs.

Establish systems for prompting prospects to contact you. Then automate every function of your marketing you can.

Want to increase your marketing reach and your sales while reducing your marketing costs and efforts? Use this link to get the details >>

I leverage the web, related software and a set of proven systems to manage my marketing and my sales. The result is that I can manage a continually growing enterprise with less effort. You can do the same.

You deserve some R and R this year - and you can get it and still grow your small business with the above three strategies. Start by setting the time aside, making a plan to implement your marketing ideas and a vacation plan so you can enjoy your life while steadily increasing your revenue.

Best,

Charlie
Marketing Ideas That Save You Time and Make You Money

What’s the benefit of using a small business marketing system?

If you live in an area where it rains sporadically but you want to keep your lawn green you may have or have considered installing an automatic sprinkler system. When you have one, your lawn and shrubs get the amount of water they need every week and keep growing.

Your business is the same. Without a small business marketing system the flow of your leads and sales is beyond your control. Install a simple system for growing your business and instead you could have a constant flow of new businesss every month. Isn’t that what you want?

The Insider Secrets to Highly Effective Marketing gives you a simple system for growing your business so that you generate more leads and sales each month with less wasted effort. Use this link to discover a business building system that works for you >>

I regularly get calls from people asking me which of the Insider Marketing Secrets series they should start with. This is it, now for the first time available in print and audio.

The Insider Secrets to Highly Effective Marketing is ready to launch in print and audio in ONLY 3 DAYS! I’ll be including four bonuses from acclaimed marketing, sales and copywriting experts for those who act quickly.

This is the one marketing tool that works for authors, consultants, engineers, info-preneurs, marketers, publishers, realtors, speakers, and retail business owners, to mention just a few.

This is the only marketing program of its kind that gives you the 5 fundamental strategies you need to ramp up your lead generation. Use this step by step program to skyrocket your sales and your revenue.

The Insider Secrets to Highly Effective Marketing is a blueprint for success. It includes the entire system I’ve used to build my own thriving business and has helped others transform their businesses.

Watch your email for the big announcement on Tuesday, because I’m including four special launch bonuses for people who claim their copy in the first 5 days.

Look for it first thing on Tuesday, April 2nd! To get advanced notification, make sure you’re registered >>

If you can’t wait, use this link to listen to the first ten minutes of The Insider Secrets to Highly Effective Marketing >>

- Charlie
Small Business Marketing For Results

This past week AT&T started blocking my email, email to my AT&T email service from my own web sites, and then I discovered AT&T along with a number of other phone companies has also started blocking access to free VOP conference call services.

I’m not sure what AT&T is up to but it would appear they are trying to make it harder for you to market your business wihout resorting to using their phone services.

Just when small business owners are starting to discover the effectiveness of using email to market their businesses it appears the phone companies are getting greedy and want to squeeze the internet for more profits.

What do you think?

- Charlie Cook
Small Business Marketing That Gets Resutls

“I am a photographer in a highly competitive area, DFW. What can I do to be different, unique and highly sought after? And, unfortunately, I have limited budget” John W., Dallas, TX

Many, if not most, small business owners are in the same boat. They have lots of competition, are without wads of cash to spend to market their small business and want to become highly sought after with lots of clients.

How can you differentiate yourself from all the others who are competing for the same business in your field? The answer is suprisingly simple.

You don’t need lots of money to attract new clients, you need a marketing plan and small business marketing tools that help you get attention, generate a steady stream of leads and new clients.

It’s how you market yourself and your services that makes you different, unique and highly sought after. It’s what you say, how you say it, what you tell people you do, how you get their attention and how you follow up. When you know how to get results with your marketing you can use these low cost and no cost small business marketing ideas to easily double or triple your business within months.

Start with The 5 Principles of Highly Effective Small Business Marketing to put your marketing strategy together and start getting all the clients you can handle. Use this link to get the details >>
- Charile Cook
Small Business Marketing That Gets Results

What’s that ringing sound you hear at this time of year? It’s the sound of cash registers ringing up the sales generated by Santa Claus. Just because he’s old, overweight, long haired and unshaven and dresses funny, don’t overlook his marketing success. Santa is a marketing expert and you can become one, too, if you follow his marketing methods.

What’s that you say? You don’t believe in Santa Claus or you don’t celebrate Christmas? It’s true that Santa may be mostly mythical, but ask almost anybody who Santa is and what he does, and they’ll tell you. And there are millions of children who are convinced he’s real. So put your doubts about Santa aside for a moment and take a look at why he’s so good at marketing.

Knows How to Be Unique
Whether it is his trademark red suit, his unconventional transportation, his belly laugh or his occupation, Santa is different. He’s one of a kind, which makes him memorable.

Gets Free Publicity
He’s a master at getting free press. He’s mentioned in the media constantly during the winter holidays. Many songs, movies and books have been written about him.

Discover how to get free publicity for your business with your articles and on the radio. Editors and radio hosts are always looking for content they can use. Here’s the link to Opening Doors with Your Articles and
Getting Free Radio Publicity to grow your business.

Is Customer Focused
While everyone knows about Santa, his marketing isn’t focused on his credentials. He rarely talks about how long he’s been in business nor does he bore people with long discussions of his work processes. Instead, he makes a huge effort to learn what people want. It is estimated that each year over a million letters are sent to Santa.

Santa supplements this effort by appearing in thousands of shopping malls around the country, listening to an average of nine thousand children per mall. He does all this just to learn what his customers want.

Gives Something Away For Free
While most of the presents under the tree are from family, including the annual fruitcake from Aunt Bernice, typically at least one gift bears Santa’s name. How can you not love someone who gives so many presents away each year and whose only expectation is a couple of cookies and a glass of milk?

Knows What He Is Selling
Santa knows what he is selling, and its not just games and toys. Santa sells hope, whether it is for the latest video game, a warm sweater or happiness.

How can you market your business more like Santa Claus does his?

Learn the The 5 Principles of Highly Effective Marketing that make Santa a success. Santa didn’t write this marketing guide, but he could of. I wrote it to detail the marketing strategies that work for small business owners and entrepreneurs like Santa.

Here’s the link to get your copy of The 5 Principles of Highly Effective Marketing manual.

1. Clarify how you and your firm are unique, and what it is that separates you from the crowd. You don’t need to put on a red suit or slide down chimneys. Define yourself by the problems you solve, the expertise you provide and what your customers say about you.

2. Get free publicity for your business, not just during holidays but all year round. Sometimes imaginative stunts like appearing in a sleigh help.

3. Ask your prospects what they want and then provide services and products that give them what they’ve asked for. The better you understand their concerns, the better services or products you’ll provide.

4. Give something away for free. It could be an article, a report, a book or a workshop. Use your free offer to prompt people to contact you and demonstrate your expertise. It works for Santa and it can work for you.

5. Know what you are selling. Your products and services bring in the money, but what do they stand for? What do they represent to your clients? Sell your prospects on achieving their objectives and dreams and deliver with tangible results they can appreciate.

Whether or not you celebrate Christmas, market like Santa and you too, can have many happy clients this and every season, without having to squeeze down a single sooty chimney.
- Happy holidays, Charlie Cook

Which is more important, small business marketing or small business sales?
What percent of sales should marketing bring in?

The marketing department of course thinks they are the most important. Or talk to a sales person and they think marketing is a bunch of silliness and that the real work is closing the deal, or selling. Who is right?

To grow your business you need both marketing and of course sales.

Your small business marketing creates the context for sales. Marketing gets your prospect’s attention, helps your prospect understand how your products and services can help them. The better your marketing, the easier it is to close the sale.

Imagine you were in sales and you had the choice between making cold calls all day long or making follow up calls to prospects who had already indicated an interest in your product and were ready to buy. Which would you want to do? Of course following up on hot leads is far preferable to making cold calls. You’d have a lot more success and sales.

No marketing and you’ll have to work hard to close a few sales.

With effective marketing you’ll generate a flood of leads and close a ton more sales.

So which is it, marketing or sales. To grow your small business you need both!
- Charlie Cook

“Up until now I have used my business website as a way for referred customers to view my work. I would like to expand my client base by marketing to people in my surrounding area for commissioned work. What’s the best way to do this?” - Kathy Swantee

Currently your web site features your artwork but does little to explain the problem you help prospects solve or why prospects should contact you. You need to start by adding some marketing copy to your web site that details why people might be interested in working with you, taking your classes and how you can help them. You also need to give them a reason to contact you. You might offer some free postcard samples of your work in return for people within your surrounding area filling in a request for a more information about a commissioned work.

Once you have your business web site set up to explain what can do for your prospects take this same marketing copy and put together a one page business marketing handout/ mailer. Then take an edited version of it and create a postcard to use in marketing your business. Of course if you want help with putting together your marketing information let me know.

Call each past client, let them know you are seeking referrals and that you’ll be sending them some information sheets to share with their friends. Then send them the information. Want to discover how to put your referral strategy into gear? I’ve detailed the whole process in The 5 Principles of Highly Effective Marketing for small business .

Do the above and you’ll have a low cost small business marketing strategy which will bring in all the clients you want.
- Charlie Cook