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What makes an ad get your attention and then keep you interested and help generate more sales? It’s when it clearly identifies a common problem and then shows you an obvious solution that you can’t live without.
Here’s an example that does exactly this >>
Just use the above link and click on play to see what I’m talking about.
- Charlie
MarketingForSuccess
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Attract Clients and Increase Your Profits
Recently I mailed my subscribers an offer of a free report in exchange for answering one question. The response was terrific. I got thousands of people to download the report and got tons of data about what people are looking for. But then I got one person who wrote in and asked,
“How do you use your marketing to get people to contact you?”
Didn’t he see how I got him to contact me? Was I being too subtle?
If you haven’t done so already, sign up to get the 7 steps to build your business and increase your profits. It’s written for small business owners and marketers and it’s free, at least for now. Use this link to claim your copy >>
Am I being too subtle? Sign up before I start charging for this exclusive report.
- Charlie
Small Business Marketing Based On Results Not Opinion
Allstate has a commercial currently running that poses the “What If…” question. I can’t remember each one, but they included:
- What if someone rear ended your car crashing your car into another car?
- What if you had an accident with a car that was worth over $60,000?
- What if a friend borrows your car and trashes it… are you covered?
- What if a branch falls on your car… re you covered?
etc.
You get the idea. At the end it makes you wonder - heh am I covered?
If you have the youtube link to this video, please let me know.
(Want to view other great video ads? Here’s the best video commercials I’ve found >>)
Now ask yourself:
- What if when you sent out a mailing, instead of getting dozens of responses you got hundreds, or when you reviewed your web sales instead of just a couple of sales you saw thousands.
- What if your marketing actually worked?
- How much more money could you be making?
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- Charlie
MarketingForSuccess.com
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
“My business is like a roller coaster. When things are going well, I’m too busy working on projects to do any marketing. Then I finish those projects and don’t have enough leads to market to.
How can I smooth out these ups and downs and grow my business even more?”
- Bill, a management consultant Cambridge MA
Ever wish you had more leads to pursue when sales take a dip or you finish a project?
Or, even better, leads to pursue before sales take a dip or the work slows down?
With a steady flow of business, you could manage staffing and cash flow better and significantly increase your annual revenue.
When I asked Bill what he did to follow up with the hundreds of senior managers he worked with each year, he sheepishly told me, “nothing”. He didn’t have a follow up strategy. I asked him how many business cards he’d collected at the last talk he gave to over 50 senior managers. His answer? “None”.
Don’t be mislead; Bill is a successful consultant. He works with CEOs and top-level managers at Fortune 500 companies. But he was making one big mistake, and it was keeping him from being as successful as he could be.
What’s the mistake Bill was making? Bill didn’t have a lead generation system or a follow up system. When there was a drop in the demand for his services, he had to start his marketing from scratch.
Want to avoid making this common marketing mistake?
Use this link to find out how >>
How can you get off the roller coaster and bring in a steady stream of business?
Think like a squirrel.
As fall approaches here in Old Greenwich, CT the dozens of squirrels in my neighborhood are busy doing what squirrels do; they’re collecting nuts and storing them away. They instinctively know that the more food they gather, the happier and fatter they’ll be, come February.
They have a system for collecting nuts each fall that gets them through the long winter.
Weathering the ups and down of the business cycles requires the same kind of planning. To come out on top, you need a marketing system for collecting leads, storing them and following up on them. The more qualified leads you have in your database, the happier you’ll be.
What’s the easiest way to generate more leads every month? Use this link >>
A lead generation system gives you an organized way of contacting prospects, qualifying them, prompting them to contact you and helping them make the decision to buy from you.
Is your lead generation system working as well as it could be to bring in a steady stream of new clients? Is it providing you with new sales from long-standing clients?
Put Your Lead Generation Marketing System to the Test
1. Do you have a system?
Bill had no system whatsoever for generating leads. He was getting occasional referrals, but referrals alone weren’t growing his business.
2. Does it work to prompt 10% of all people exposed to you or your marketing to contact you?
Whether you are giving talks to large gatherings of your target market, as Bill is, or marketing online through your website, the basic concept behind a lead generation system is the same. You want to motivate as many qualified prospects as you can to contact you.
Most small businesses and service professionals have websites, but few sites generate more than a trickle of leads. The graphics, content and marketing messages on your site should prompt a minimum of 10% of site visitors to contact you. If this isn’t happening, your site is broken and you need to fix it.
3. Do you have a sequenced system of communication for converting prospects to clients?
In my experience, only 1 out of 10 small business owners have a system for converting prospects in place. So if you don’t you’re not alone but if you want to grow your business you need one.
Once a prospect expresses an interest, you’ve gotten them to take the first step in the process. It doesn’t mean they want you to sell them. Usually that is the quickest way to kill the sale.
Prospects want to get to know you, trust you and discover the value of your product and services. Whatever media you use, your follow-up communication should accomplish this.
What’s involved in setting up your lead generation system? Use this link to get the details >>
You don’t have to go nuts to develop a solid lead generation system. With a simple, strategic marketing system in place, your business can grow every month, whether you’re immersed in a project or on vacation.
If you don’t already have one, put your lead generation system into place this fall and see your business continue to prosper this winter.
- Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Work
Can you teach?
Is there an inner teacher in you that could help grow your business?
I’ve been a teacher ever since I graduated from college - literally and figuratively. My first post-college job was as an elementary school teacher and then I moved on to teaching children with behavior problems as a special education teacher. Later I graduated to working with big kids, with senior executives as a management consultant.
For the last couple of decades I’ve found my true passion as a marketing coach developing marketing ideas. I love providing marketing solutions and helping people transform their businesses.
When you know something that can help someone else it’s satisfying to share that knowledge and it’s good for business too. One of the most effective ways to build credibility with prospects and to help them see how valuable your products and services are is to teach.
You may never have trained formally as a teacher or graded papers but if you’ve been in business for a few years you’re an expert and your clients would be impressed if they realized how much you knew.
One way to convince clients of your expertise is to tell them, “Twenty years in business” or “America’s best”. You could do that but it wouldn’t impress many. Instead you can effectively demonstrate your expertise with articles, newsletters, audios, videos, etc. Do this regularly and your prospects will see you as the go to expert in your field.
You may be asking yourself - “Aren’t there tons of others in my field who know as much as I do or more? How can I differentiate myself from them and stand out from the competition?”
You’re 100% right. In most service professions or product areas, there are lots of competitors, people who have the same amount of experience as you do or more, but there is one difference…
Most small business owners don’t use their marketing to educate their prospects and to capture their loyalty and their business.
Regardless whether you sell advertising, concrete plants, hearing aids, real estate, design, or consulting services, there are tons of ideas you can give away, ideas you can teach your prospects that don’t cost you a dime and make you look smarter and better than your competitors.
If you use this simple strategy you can easily stand out from your competitors and be seen as the expert in your niche. Isn’t that what you want to stand out from your competition and get the greatest share of the business?
If you’ve ever wanted a simple and honest way to market your business and see your profits grow I’ve detailed what to do in the ‘Insider Secrets to Highly Effective Marketing‘. Use this link to claim your copy >>
I’m always teaching whether it’s with my clients or my friends on the ski slope or out sailing and there is a point where you should drawn the line. Don’t try teaching your wife or husband. Even if I know exactly what my wife should be doing to make the perfect ski turn, she’d much rather hear it from a ski instructor. The same goes for your kids once they become teenagers.
Even though your family may not appreciate you as a teacher - your prospects do. They do want to discover the great insights and tips you may take for granted, ones that will help you build a long-term winning relationship with them.
You’ve worked hard to become as wise as you are - now tap your inner teacher and leverage all that effort by marketing your knowledge with the ‘Insider Secrets to Highly Effective Marketing‘ and get all the business you deserve. Use this link to claim your copy >>
You can teach your prospects to buy and grow your business!
- Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Work
Is your marketing bait working?
Funny Marketing Ideas #1 The Goldfish
This is one of the 5 ideas I had for a marketing lead generator video.
- Charlie Cook
Small Business Marketing That Gets Results
Want Success With Your Small Business Marketing? Find out which things make the difference
Last week we got the big one.
We got our first big winter storm and up north in Vermont where I ski, the mountain received over 48 lovely inches of fresh snow, enough to even convince my wife to leave a day early for the holiday weekend. Here on the coast in Connecticut where I live the same storm produced 2 measly inches of rock hard frozen crud.
What was the difference? Just a couple of degrees.
Your business is the same. Small shifts in how your small business marketing can make a big difference in your results and your profitability. With the right marketing strategy you can get an abundance of business or with a slightly different approach hardly any business at all. Here are four little changes which can yield big results for your business.
1. What You Do With Your Goals
Everyone has goals for themselves and their business. Some keep them in mind and only a few commit them to paper. A small difference but it turns out the people who regularly identify and put their goals on paper end up making over ten times as much.
What are your small business marketing goals for this year? Do they include discovering how to attract more clients?
2. Where You Focus Your Marketing
If you’re like most people your small business marketing touts your good name and your products, it’s focused on you. Typically this approach yields only minimal results and limited sales.
Your prospects’ biggest concern is their own needs and wants. Change a few words in how you talk about yourself and your products and services. You’ll find that instead of just getting a luke warm response you’ll be generating a ton of hot leads with your marketing.
This simple shift from a focus on you to a focus on your prospects could help you attract as many clients in one month as you did in the last six as it did for Denise Annunciata of Leaplaw or help you get your next $200,000 sale as it did for Bill Orser of SafePlay.
3. What You Do With Leads
Last week I got a call from John, a builder in Oregon who after ten years was still struggling with his marketing. I asked John how many names he had in his prospect list. He said he had a dozen or so.
Over ten years anyone in business will have helped, talked to and met 1,500 people or more unless they live in an isolated village in Alaska. Imagine instead of just giving someone your business card you asked them for theirs. Then take the next step and ask them to tell you either what they want and need relative to your services or for the name of one person they know who could use your services.
Do this small task and you’ll have more leads than you ever imagined.
Over ten years, using this easy marketing technique you could have built a database of thousands of people to contact with information about your services.
With the help of any contact management system or database program it’s easy to build your business network. It may seem like a small thing to do each week to take 2-5 minutes to add in the names of prospects but without this simple action, ten years down the road you could still be struggling like John.
4. How Often You Contact Your Prospect List
80% of sales are lost due to lack of follow-up. Personally this drives me crazy when I hear a client tell me about their low lead to buyer conversion rate. More than 9 out of 10 times the problem is they don’t have the simple follow-up systems in place.
Think about it. You’ve done all the hard work to identify a qualified prospect. You know they want what you sell - yet all too many don’t buy. Don’t be satisfied with this!
I asked one client why they didn’t follow up inquiries by interested prospects with a series of helpful emails to engage their interest, help build credibility and create a sense of urgency. Their response was they didn’t want to pester the prospect and they already had a once a month follow system of contacts in place.
When someone contacts you they’re indicating an interest and what they want is to get all the information they need to get know you and trust you and buy from you. Wait a month and the prospect will have completely forgotten why they contacted you in the first place. It’s during the first week that they want to hear from you, again and again.
It may seem like a small difference, waiting to make contact over and over or doing it the first week, but it is often the difference between losing a prospect or adding a new client.
Can you see that if you made these four changes you’d be more successful? Now imagine if you made a few more.
There are hundreds of little ways you can change your small business marketing that will make a big difference in your profits including ad copy, pricing strategies, product bundling, use of ezines, etc,. Each one could help you make 10-20% more this year.
Put a few of them together and you could easily see your income double from $750,000 to $1,500,000 in less than a year.
Small differences in temperature can result in over 36 inches of new snow versus 1 or 2 inches of frozen crud or 36 new clients versus 1 or 2 duds. While I can’t control the weather and have to take what mother-nature dishes out, you can control what you do with your small business marketing and how successful you are, it just takes making a few changes.
- Charlie Cook
Every day I get dozens of questions about small business marketing. In order to answer these I’ve set up part of my site to give answers to common small business marketing questions. Here are the links:
Index of Small Business Marketing Questions and Answers
and pages each with dozens of small business marketing answers.
How to Write Your Marketing Plan
Free Marketing Ideas and Answers
You’ll find hundreds of small business marketing answers to help you grow your business.
- Charlie Cook
If you want to grow your business quickly there is one thing you’ll need in abundance, more prospects. Sounds obvious but few small businesses have a reliable or cost effective system for generating a steady stream of leads and clients.
Here’s the fundamental small business equation. More prospects, more people who know what you offer and how you can help them, equals more business profits.
Each month you want to contact more qualified prospects than you did last month. Do this and I guarantee you’ll have more clients and more income.
How can you get started? Use the lead generation tools available on this site to start building your database of qualified prospects and converting them to clients.
- Charlie Cook
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