Marketing Strategy

5 Easy Ways to Avoid The Roller Coaster Effect With Your Marketing

Charlie Cook

Seeing the results of marketing and advertising your business can be like watching a roller coaster. The day you run your ad you see a flurry of activity; your phone starts ringing, your web site traffic increases and/ or potential clients visit your store. Your hopes soar. sales go up. Two or three days pass and the response goes down. You look at the bill for the advertising and your jaw drops. Your hopes descend.

Nancy called me from Portland, Oregon with just this problem. Every time one of her ads appears in a local publication, customers start walking in the door of her home furnishing store. A few days later the number of prospects and sales goes down. Her advertising gets results, but the thousands of dollars she is paying each month is killing her profits. What can she do?

Whether you advertise your consulting business in The Harvard Business Review or your interior decorating service in the Penny Saver, your ad will cost significant dollars.

How can you make your advertising pay for itself?

How can you use marketing and advertising to create a STEADY stream of business?

Learn how to create a steady stream of qualified leads with your small business marketing plan. Apply “The Insider Secrets to Attracting More & Better Customers” and you’ll find more and more people contacting you on a weekly basis.

Make your web site a lead generator. Learn how with “Creating Web Sites that Sell“.

Write Your Ad to Sell and To Generate Leads Of all the people who could benefit from your products and services, what percentage is likely to buy today? Hopefully a few, but the majority are more likely to need your services tomorrow, next week or next month.

Write your ad to prompt people to buy and if they’re not interested in making a purchase, to contact you. When you write your ad:

1. Sell your products or services by selling your solution.

2. Prompt prospects to buy. Include a call to action.

3. Motivate prospects to give you their contact information.

For each person who responds to your ad and makes a purchase today, you should be able to get ten qualified prospects to contact you. Once you have their contact information, you can send them a regular email or postcard for far less than it would cost to run your ad on a weekly basis.

Explain what you do in your ads, and with your elevator speech and marketing message so that you prompt prospects to contact you. Get your copy of “15 Second Marketing” and get your prospect’s attention and their business.

Follow Up On Your Advertising
An ad can be the first step in marketing your products and services but unless you follow up, it may be the last. Its what you do after your ad runs that determines whether you’re able to make it pay for itself in the days and months to come.

Let’s say your ad works in getting people to visit your web site, call you or come into your store. What’s the next step? How can you follow up to increase your sales?

1. Make sure you get their contact information so you can follow up.

2. Whether people stopped by your web site, left a phone message, emailed you or visited your store – follow up promptly. Get back to them within the day, if not sooner. A prospect is most likely to buy or start a profitable relationship when he/she is looking for a solution. Let your leads linger and they’ll go stale. If you wait prospects may contact other service providers or stores, and you’ve given them time to make their purchase through someone else.

3. Respond immediately. Use a phone call or an email to let them know you understand the problem they want solved and that you can help them. Even a personalized autoresponder message will do the job.

4. Market to your in-house list of contacts. If you want people to remember you when they have a need and are ready to make a decision to buy, make sure they think of you as the solution provider. The best way to do this is to regularly provide ideas, tips and information that your prospects want.

5. Create opportunities for personal contact, whether through your print mailings, ezine or web site, you want to prompt prospects to contact you to discuss their needs and / or place their order. Ask them what they want, what they are looking for. When they send you an email, follow up with a call. Tell them how to contact you, how to schedule a personal conversation and then follow up with a call.

Learn how to use your web site to prompt people to generate leads and get people to personally contact you so you can help them with your products and services. I use these web strategies to generate over a thousand new leads each week. Learn how with “Creating Web Sites that Sell“.

Advertising is an expensive ticket to marketing your products and services. Use these strategies to make sure you get your money’s worth and you’ll find your advertising paying for itself over and over. Instead of getting your thrills from watching your business go up and down, you’ll find yourself enjoying the excitement of watching your profits steadily move up.


The Ten Steps To Marketing Your Small Business

Charlie Cook

Can you imagine you’re ninety years old and still hiking up mountains with your grandchildren, bench pressing more than most twenty year olds, and making milli0ns of dollars?

This past week Jack LaLanne, America’s first TV fitness guru, turned ninety. Not only is he still sound of mind, in great shape, he’s made milli0ns and is still earning more. How does he do it?

You know it is important to eat your fruits and veggies, exercise regularly, avoid drinking and smoking and get enough sleep to stay healthy. To that list Jack LaLanne would add, set clear goals, exercise with weights twice a week, avoid eating between meals and keep your mind active.

Of course you can’t just eat well and skip the exercise or avoid the drinking and smoking and skimp on sleep. Jack LaLanne is still going strong at 90 because he does ALL the things required to stay healthy every day.

Marketing your business requires the same comprehensive, disciplined approach Jack LaLanne uses to stay healthy at ninety. To attract new clients and retain existing ones you need to set goals, target a need, get attention, prompt action, grow your network, establish credibility, provide a solution, follow up, demonstrate value and stay in touch.

These are the ten essential steps to marketing your business.

Learn how to keep your business healthy with “The Insider Secrets to Attracting More & Better Customers” manual. You’ll learn how to get attention, get clients and be more successful.

Like a staircase, the steps are connected and you need to put them together in the proper sequence and use each of them regularly. A common small business marketing mistake is to focus on just one or two of the above steps and hope for the best.

Joan, who owns a sports facility, called last week about her advertising campaign. It was costing her significant dollars but wasn’t translating into new clients. What was the problem?

Advertising can help get attention but to be effective it needs to be focused on clients’ needs and prompt them to action. Joan’s advertising was focused on her solution, not on prospects’ needs resulting in a disappointing response. Once she rewrote her ads to target prospects’ needs, her response rates and business revenue increased.

Larry’s promotional efforts were working but he wasn’t having success translating all the attention he was getting into dollars and cents. Thanks to top search engine positioning and hundreds of links to his web site, thousands of people were visiting his site each day. Yet, on average, only five people per day were contacting him about his services. Larry was doing a great job of getting attention but wasn’t prompting his prospects to action.

Learn how to use your web site to generate a steady stream of qualified prospects and revenue with “Creating Web Sites that Sell“.

Your Marketing Fitness
You can have a steady flow of new prospects and clients each month if you adopt a healthy small business marketing strategy. Here’s how.

1. Set Goals

Regularly review your marketing. Assess what’s working and what isn’t and set objectives for lead generation, client acquisition and retention.

2. Target a Need

Focus your ads, your elevator speech and your small business marketing copy on prospects’ concerns.

3. Get Attention

Prospects need to know that you exist before they will contact you.

4. Prompt Action

In order to get prospects to give you their contact information, inquire about your services or buy your products, prompt them to action. Use your marketing copy and your offers to get prospects to call you, visit your web site or your store, and buy your products and services.

5. Grow Your Network

The more qualified leads you have, the better.

6. Establish Credibility

You need to demonstrate your competence and convince prospects to trust you before they’ll make a purchase.

7. Follow Up
Old leads are cold leads. Follow up when leads are fresh. When people contact you, send an immediate email response and give them a call within 24 hours.

8. Provide a Solution

Make sure your products and services are the solution to your prospects’ problems.

9. Demonstrate Value

If you want someone to buy, they need to understand the benefits.

10. Stay in Touch

Don’t let prospects forget you when they need you and are ready to buy.

If you increased the time you spent working out each day and improved your diet, you’d start to see a difference in a couple of weeks. You’d be stronger and healthier.

Small Business marketing is the same. You need to do all the right things consistently. Start using these ten marketing steps and in a couple of weeks you’ll start to see a change. You’ll find more prospects contacting you and a steady increase in revenue.

Whether you want to be fit and profitable at ninety or not you can learn from Jack LaLanne’s continued health and prosperity. It just takes some discipline and knowledge. Apply both to keep yourself and your business in good health.


7 Key Small Business Marketing Ideas

Charlie Cook

…Index
of Small Business Marketing Articles and Marketing Ideas


4 Steps to Ultimate Success with Your Small Business Marketing

Charlie Cook

Beyond more sales and bigger profits, beyond the numbers, what are you really after? Financial security? Of course. Is that all? I doubt it.

The successful small business owners I know are motivated by more than the money, critical as that is. They’re driven by passions of all kinds and looking for satisfaction from all sorts of sources, whether they’re looking for a business challenge, to make a contribution or to afford a particular lifestyle.

One of my clients had an offer to buy her home health care business for millions of dollars. She turned it down and challenged herself to grow her business by another 50% before she sold it.

Another client of mine is cutting back on his lucrative real estate sales so he can build his coaching business. He wants to spend more time working from the comfort of his home office and avoid living his life in LA traffic.

What is it you really want to achieve by being more successful?

Last week I launched the revised 15 Second Marketing in print and audio, consulted with clients and kept my business running at full speed while spending my mornings skiing and my afternoons working from our ski condo in Vermont. And had one of my best week in sales ever.

You see, I love small business marketing but I’m also passionate about skiing. Thanks to laptops, DSL lines and other advances in technology and a wise and supportive wife, I can keep my business growing and still have time for the other things I love to do.

Wouldn’t you like to have a successful business that lets you live the live you want?

You can, if you use this simple formula:

1. Become an Expert in your Field
Whether you’re a sole practitioner or run a company that sell millions of dollars of timber products, your prospects and clients are more likely to buy from you if they see you as the expert(s). Most small business owners already have a high level of knowledge.  Leverage it so that people come to see you as an expert.

In the late ‘90s I became one of the first experts on search engines and built a site that reviewed and ranked search engine performance. Within a year of its launch, I sold it to one of the largest information technology sites. Yes, I used a portion of the proceeds to buy our ski condo.

Paul Figueiredo, one of my clients, is a successful real estate agent in Los Angeles. He’s leveraged his expertise into a new business coaching other realtors.

Want to learn how to use your expertise to grow a successful business? Find out how >>

2. Seek Out Expert Help
A contradiction to #1 above? Not at all. You aren’t an expert at everything, and it’s a waste of your time to try to be. You’ll need expert marketing guidance to grow your business.

If you want to market on the Internet, you’ll need help discovering what works. I’ve detailed the strategy that I’ve used to attract clients and grow my business in Creating Web Sites That Sell. Use this link to claim your copy >>

3. Systematize Your Small Business Marketing
Most small businesses spend time and money marketing when things are slow. When business picks up, they’re busy with day-to-day management and they let their marketing slide. The result is a roller coaster ride of slow and busy times and revenue that dips as fast as it rises.

What you want is a steady stream of new leads and new business coming in every month, whether you’re on vacation or busy with current client projects. You could be taking advantage of available online marketing systems to achieve this and keep business rolling in each month.

For example, I use an email broadcast system and an ecommerce system that lets me automate my business marketing to a high degree. I can access it from anyplace with Internet access. Use this link to get the details on automating your online marketing >>

4. Discover How to Close More Sales
You know that marketing is just the precursor to making a sale. Marketing can find and warm up the prospect, but at some point you need to convert that prospect into a loyal client. What’s the best way to do this?

Business owners and even professional marketers make the same mistake. They assume that the best way to sell a prospect is to talk about their companies and their products.

There is a much better way to close more sales. It’s a system for eliminating the obstacles that block sales and creating a straight path so your prospects become clients. Use this link to discover how to close more sales >>

Want to live the life you dream of?

What are you waiting for? Use the simple strategies I’ve detailed for you in the ‘Insider Secrets’ series and make your dreams a reality.

Gotta go. It’s started snowing and my skis are sitting by the door, waiting for some exercise. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.


Top Business Marketing Ideas Every Small Business Owner Needs to Know

Charlie Cook



The 4 Inside Secrets to Small Business Marketing Success

Charlie Cook

If you think small business marketing is confusing, try driving in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland. My wife and I were there last week, visiting our son who is studying at the University of Edinburgh for a semester. We wanted to see him and explore the city.

The Old Town, where we stayed, is a maze of narrow, medieval streets winding up and down a steep ridge. We found our way on foot by consulting a street map at every twist and turn, but then we got ambitious and rented a car to take a day trip out of the city. That’s when we really needed help.

It took directions from the hotel concierge, a city map, instructions from the car hire agent on how to avoid cobblestone re-paving projects, and a road atlas to extricate ourselves from the tangle of one way streets and roundabouts.

What had appeared to be a straightforward route on the map of less than a mile from our hotel to the road out of town involved more than a dozen turns and took 20 minutes of seemingly driving in circles. The map alone wasn’t enough; we needed up to date knowledge and local experience to get where we wanted to go.

Marketing your business is the same. You can waste your time and money going in circles unless you have clear directions and advice. It’s easy to follow others, take wrong turns and end up at a dead end. Has that ever happened to you?

Do you want to find the quickest way to reach your objectives? Some people persist in plunging ahead without a map, a guidebook or the help of inside knowledge. That works if you don’t mind getting lost, but if you have limited time and a limited budget, there’s a better way.

To help you find the most direct path to attracting more clients, I’ve put together four essential small business marketing resources. These will guide you on your way to increased profits:

1. 15 Second Marketing
What’s the one most important thing to do to generate more sales?

If you want to sell more, the first step is to let people know how you can help them. In the New Town section of Edinburgh, we walked past dozens of handsome Georgian buildings with a simple brass plate next to each door. The plates only had the name of the business; Walker Group; Thomson Partners; Clerk & Maxwell; Kevin McAllister, etc. It was impossible to know what business these companies were in.

If your business has been around for hundreds of years like many of the ones we passed and you’re selling products or services in a town where everybody already knows you, this discreet approach may work.

If you’re competing for prospects who don’t already know you, you need a better way to get your prospects’ attention and their business.

When you tell people your name or that you are a sales agent for a real estate firm, you’re only talking about yourself, not what you do for your clients. Ditto when you tell people you’re selling a new, innovative product. Get your prospects’ attention by talking about your products and services in terms of solutions and benefits.

Ready to discover the inside secret to getting attention? Get the details >>

2. Highly Effective Small Business Marketing
Getting attention is the first step, but by itself it won’t get you the sale. Too many business owners and marketers make the mistake of thinking that all they need are leads. The key to business success isn’t the number of leads you generate, but what you do with them. It’s the number of prospects that you convert to clients that matters.

Typically, small business owners spend time and money on marketing strategies and generate a few new clients. Then they focus on helping those clients and forget about marketing. Sound familiar?

The secret to growing your business each month is to establish a system that not only keeps leads flowing in, but automatically converts more prospects to clients. That way you can rely on your marketing strategy to build your business each month.

Discover which marketing system actually works to generate more clients and sales every month  >>

3. Creating A Web Site That Sells
Do you market online? When we stayed in Edinburgh we wanted somewhere to stay that was centrally located and gave us the freedom to do a bit of our own cooking. Thanks to the Internet, my wife found an apartment residence with a kitchen and laundry machines (a feature that our son took immediate advantage of).

Want straightforward information about how to generate a flood of visitors to your web site, and how to convert 4 to 10 times more of them into clients? You’ll find a step-by-step explanation in Creating Web Sites That Sell. Use this link >>

4. Eliminating Obstacles to Sales
Want to close more sales? After visiting other parts of Scotland last year and hearing our son talk about how interesting Edinburgh was, I didn’t need to be sold on visiting the city.

Wouldn’t you like to have your prospects pre-sell themselves on your products and services? You can by using simple marketing strategies.

Discover the advanced marketing strategies that reliably melt prospects’ resistance and sell more of your products and services. Get the details with this link >>

Don’t be confused by marketing and waste time and money. Get the road map, the guide and the inside information you need to navigate your way to success. I’ve included the inside secrets to marketing your business in the 4 guides mentioned above. Use them and you’ll make more money with less effort.


Small Business Marketing Strategies and Ideas That Work

Charlie Cook


Small Business Marketing Strategies to Boost Your Profits Overnight

Charlie Cook


Are You Targeting the Right Prospects with Your Small Business Marketing?

Charlie Cook

Steve called from Minneapolis to ask me how to attract new clients for his auto repair shop. He has been in business for two years and has four trained technicians to keep busy, but he was having difficulty attracting enough new customers.

Steve wasn’t just waiting for people to show up at his shop. He regularly mailed letters to new homeowners in the area. His rationale was that people who had just moved into town would be looking for a mechanic before long.

Steve wanted to know why what seemed like a good strategy wasn’t working. Why was he only getting one or two inquires from each mailing to 500 prospects? He asked me if he was targeting the right people. “Anyone with a car is in my target market, right?”

Good question. In theory, yes, any car owner living in the area is a potential client. But in reality, car owners have very different attitudes towards car maintenance.

Steve was making the same mistake that most small business owners make in thinking about their target market. He was trying to market to everyone who might use his service instead of targeting the most likely prospects. After trying this for a year, he recognized that this marketing strategy was costly and inefficient.

According to Albert Einstein, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Are you getting the number of inquiries and sales you want from your target market? If you’re not getting results then why keep marketing the same way over and over again?

Discover the marketing strategies that actually work for businesses like yours. Use this link >

The alternative to broad based, costly marketing is to target your prospects more precisely and shape your marketing accordingly.

There are three types of people in your target market. First, there are people with immediate problems. These prospects have urgent concerns and want solutions today. In Steve’s case, these are the customers who come in with a flat tire or a blown head gasket.

Second, there are people who have a problem or want to improve their situation and are considering a purchase. They need more information in order to understand why they should use your product or service. They may take more time to reach a decision to buy.

Again in Steve’s case, these are people who need their disc brake pads replaced before they fail and cause more costly damage, or who could be getting better mileage with a properly tuned engine, or who should purchase new tires soon to avoid a potential accident. These are the people who need to be educated in order to make a decision.

Finally, there are people like my dear Dad in every target market. It was a point of pride with Dad to see how little he could spend to maintain his cars. He never took a car to a mechanic unless the broken part could no longer be wired back together or the car just wouldn’t start. People like Dad have blind spots in certain areas.

Is business marketing your blind spot? It doesn’t have to be. You could find out the proven strategies and techniques that can double your business. Get answers >>

The same is true in any business. Some people won’t spend money to fix or repair something even if it’s barely functioning. No matter what you say or do they don’t want to be bothered. Their objective is to spend as little money as possible regardless of whether it costs them more in the long run or not. Know anyone like this?

Even if you have the perfect product or solution for these people, you’re not going to get their business. They either know it all or don’t want to know. Marketing to this group is a waste of your time and money.

You’ll get a much better response by targeting your prospects more precisely. That means marketing to what your prospects are looking for.  You’ll end up spending less and making more. Steve needed to focus his marketing on car owners who want to fix a problem or prevent one from developing.

In Steve’s case a few changes to his marketing letter could make a huge difference. With a few questions he could help his prospects identify their concerns and then give them some helpful maintenance tips that involve his services.

Discovering how to target your prospects to get results from your marketing is just one part of The Insider Secrets to Attracting More & Better Customers course. You’ll discover how to attract clients like a magnet. Once you see how many inquires and sales you can generate, you’ll wonder why you waited so long to apply these simple strategies to grow your business.


Where To Focus Your Marketing To Maximize Sales

Charlie Cook

“I have a web site, send out sales letters, run ads and network whenever possible, but I’m only attracting a trickle of new clients. What am I doing wrong?”– Bart, Spokane, WA

When I looked at Bart’s marketing materials, it was clear he was working very hard and had spent a lot of money on his marketing. In terms of marketing activities he wasn’t doing anything wrong, but his marketing was still missing the mark.

Bart’s marketing was modeled on the same approach that his competitors and most small business owners use. It was focused on his company, his products, his services and his credentials. Even though they were all top notch, this approach doesn’t work. No matter how long Bart used this approach, he’d still be throwing away time and money.

If you only learn one thing from this article, understand this. A company-focused, product- and service-focused marketing strategy will not help you achieve your potential in the marketplace. You may get a trickle of clients and referrals from satisfied clients but you won’t attract the quantity or quality of new clients that you deserve.  In fact, you may drive away some of your best prospects.

Don’t make this mistake. Discover a marketing plan that works for your business >>

How should you focus your marketing to attract a flood of new clients? Before I give you the answer, let me tell you about a study of babies featured on Livescience.com Researchers found that 10 month old infants tend to “grasp the names of objects that interest them rather than whatever the speaker thinks is important”.

An infant is most likely to learn the name for an object they find interesting, whether or not its what you want them to pay attention to. Instead of “book” or “school” they may learn “dog”.

According to the researcher, Hirsh-Pasek, “We all learn best when things are meaningful”. Makes sense for people of all ages, doesn’t it?

There is only one marketing strategy that actually works to attract new clients. You need to gear your marketing to the way babies, teenagers and adults like you and I learn. Make your marketing meaningful to your prospects.

Want to make sure your small business marketing is meaningful to your prospects and works? There is a simple solution >>

You may find your company history, processes, products and services infinitely interesting, but most prospects don’t (at least not at first – they’ll want to know more about you later in the sales process). No matter how many times they see your marketing materials, your prospects won’t pay any attention to them if they don’t speak to their concerns.

To get where you want to go with your business you need to focus your marketing strategies on your clients’ interests, not yours. It may seem like a small difference, but it will determine everything else you do to market your product and services and how successful you’ll be.

3 Steps to Client-Focused Marketing That Works

1. Start by identifying what your client’s interests are relative to your product and services.

2. Evaluate each of your marketing materials to determine if they lead with an emphasis on your company and your products or on your clients’ interests.

3. Get rid of marketing materials and strategies that don’t work and replace them with a client-focused strategy and set of marketing tools.

Want your prospects’ attention and their business?

Stop wasting your time and resources on a company- and product-focused marketing approach and discover exactly what you need to do. If you want more than just a trickle of new business, you owe it to yourself to use the following link to get the details and see your business grow.

Get the details >>