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The #1 Web Marketing Mistake to Avoid

By Charlie Cook | September 18, 2008

“First let’s get traffic to the site to get sales going and then we can worry about our image.”

Is this approach successful? Should you try to ramp up traffic to your web site first, and then worry about the image your copy and design project to prospects?

That’s what the business partner of a friend of mine thought. Rather than designing the site and writing copy to give it a unique identity, keep visitors’ interest and convert them to buyers, she
was solely focused on improving the search engine ranking of the site to get more traffic.

Her logic was that the higher their site ranked on the results page of search engines like Google, the more traffic they’d get and the more money they’d make. This is logically correct, but almost
always wrong.

A top ten ranking in Google can bring more visitors to your site, but in most cases, that doesn’t mean more sales or a dramatic increase in sales. Why not?

Most web sites are like out-of-tune car engines with clogged fuel pumps and dirty spark plugs. They’re barely turning over. With an engine like that, no matter how much gas you pour into the tank, you won’t get far.

Ready to tune up your site so it brings in massive profits? Start here >>

A top search engine ranking and more traffic won’t help you make more money if your site isn’t a lead-generating, selling machine. I regularly hear from people who’ve spent tens of thousands of
dollars on pay-per-click advertising and SEO whose sites still aren’t even breaking even, much less increasing profits.

Don’t waste your time and money driving traffic to a site that doesn’t sell. If you do, I can guarantee you’ll still be struggling 12 months from now.

How do you make your site sell?

Stand Out to Your Target Market!

Discover the fastest way to ramp up your online sales and profits >>

How many sites have you seen that look like cookie cutter versions of other sites? Can you even tell what the company does, or which services they provide? Is it immediately clear what makes them better than the competition or what’s in it for you and why you should bother sticking around?

If your web site looks like everyone else’s, makes the same promises, or is vague or unclear about the benefits you offer your prospects, you’ll lose them in a nano second.

A first-time visitor to your site scans the page they land on and makes a snap judgment about your company. They scan the copy and photos and decide in a matter of seconds whether you are likely to have what they are looking for and whether to leave or stay (at least for a couple of minutes). And obviously they’ve got to stay for you to make a sale or convince them to give you their email so you can market to them.

Discover the fastest way to ramp up your online sales and profits >>

How do you build a site that encourages prospects to stay? You’ve got just four tools to use to make your site jump out and grab your prospects’ attention. Use them or lose them.

1. Your Headlines
The first words that your prospects see when they hit your site, keep them reading or send them away. Make them about your prospects, what they want, not about you. And offer them something
for free that generates a lead.

Recently I added 4 words of text to the homepage of MarketingForSuccess that increased my opt-in rate by 32%. Take a look and see if you know which words made the difference.

2. Your Images
The pictures, or better yet, videos, you use should either directly support your headline or create the image that you think will attract your target market. For most sites, fewer images are
better, they just distract from the words.

One exception to this is sites that sell anything related to lifestyle, whether it’s clothing, jewelry or outdoors gear. For these sites it’s all about image, and that’s what attracts your prospects. Take a look at the sites of Patagonia, Horny Toad or the Sundance Catalogue.

Ready to discover how to use your site to both attract traffic and convert it into profits? Use this proven system >>

3. Use Audio
You can use audio testimonials to build credibility, audio clips to entertain to educate and to tell visitors what you want them to do. And these can increase your conversion rates of visitors to leads and sales by 10-20%.

4. Your Page Design
Your web site houses your online business. When you design it, find the most talented web designer you can. Find someone who knows how to do more than make your site look pretty. Find someone who can create a unique site for you that sells!

The look and feel of your site is all your prospects have to evaluate whether they should do business with you. The design of your site is what brings together your words and images and creates the impression prospects have when they visit it. Make it the right one!

Ready to make your site come to life and start selling? >>

Put these 4 elements together to create a site that makes a strong positive impression, generates leads and sales. Then once your site converts visitors into buyers, it’s time to ramp up traffic with
SEO and pay-per-click advertising.

To your success,
Charlie

P.S. Most websites don’t convert enough leads or make enough sales… and most websites could be making a lot more money.

What’s the secret to making massive online profits with your website?

It’s simply a matter of putting the horse in front of the cart to get your web site working so you can maximize your online profits. Discover how >>

Click here to listen to a podcast of this article online >>

Have You Ever Put Lipstick on a Pig?

By Charlie Cook | September 10, 2008

What is it with putting lipstick on a pig?

Obama and McCain both seem to love this phrase. According to Meghan McCain her Dad uses it frequently and at last count McCain used it plenty publicly referring to Hilary’s health care plan and to Mitt Romney.

What’s it mean?

It refers to dressing something up and trying to sell it as something it isn’t.

Obviously you can take this idea too far and the first thing I’d recommend is that to anyone who uses this phrase drop but don’t dump the concept.

What am I saying? Should you put lipstick on a pig?

No! But regularly businesses rename products and bring them back to life. For example book publishers look at poorly selling titles and if the book looks like it could have life they come up with a better title, one that catches attention and sells.

So don’t throw the baby out with the bath water, use this idea, just not to literally.

Does this work? Does renaming and repacking existing products or services work to bring life to a poor sales?

Yes! It’s one of the easiest ways to ramp up profits. Just don’t call it putting lipstick on a pig. And of course I’m assuming none of your products or services are pigs anyways.

– Charlie
MarketingForSuccess

Harvest Low-hanging Profit and Triple Your Small Business Income

By Charlie Cook | August 27, 2008

Many small business owners, entrepreneurs and marketers struggle to be more profitable and overlook simple, effective strategies that could increase their sales by as much as 200%.

Are you one of them? Have you overlooked these marketing opportunities, too?

• Do you have a list of satisfied clients but you’re having trouble increasing your sales?
• Do you send out mailings and get a miniscule rate of return?
• Do you run ads and expect a landslide of new business?
• Do you have a web site that barely pays for itself?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re burning up time and money stretching and straining to increase sales and missing the low-hanging profits you could be taking in.

Have you been to one of those Pick-Your-Own orchards? It’s an annual fall excursion in my family. Each year we drive to our favorite orchard in Monkton, Vermont and pick a few pecks of apples for eating and baking.

If you’ve picked your own apples, you know that it’s a lot easier to grab the ones hanging on the lower branches. The wooden ladders that reach to the top of the trees are heavy, awkward, and never nearby when you need them. Once you’ve located a ladder and wrestled it into position, you’ve got to scramble up without damaging yourself or the brittle branches of the tree.

You can pick five times as many apples in the same amount of time by moving from tree to tree and grabbing the ones within reach. Likewise, there is profit potential within reach if you know how to take advantage of it.

Discover the easiest way to pick up more profits with your business. >>

Small Changes Add Up to Big Profits
Recently my VW dealer sent me an email detailing 4 ways to improve my mileage by 20%; replace filters, change the oil, tune the engine and keep the tires properly inflated. Each is a small, low cost change but making them could add up to significant savings. You can improve sales with similar low cost changes in your marketing and have a big impact on profits.

Here are seven small changes that can yield big results:

1. Replace your marketing message; Increase sales by 20% to 3,000%.
2. Use an automated lead generation system to target your best prospects; Increase sales by 100% to 1,000%.
3. Change your pricing strategy; Increase profits by 20% to 65%.
4. Replace your sales script; Increase closing rates and sales by 50% to 80%
5. Change your sales page headline; Increase your income by 50% to 150%.
6. Include related up-sell offers; Increase profits by 12% to 25%.
7. Use every page on your website to generate leads, instead of just one or two pages; Increase your sales by 15% to 40%.

Ready to discover how and where to increase your profits? Find the easy answers >>

The solution to making more with your business isn’t to look for a magic marketing pill that will solve all your problems instantly. It doesn’t exist. The solution is to pick the low hanging fruit to get 10% and 20% and bigger improvements.

How to Increase Sales by 300%
If you could find a way to increase your profits by 10% every month, you would have more than tripled your income by the end of the year. Harvesting low-hanging profits can do that for your business. Like plucking the apples at arm’s length in an orchard, it’s less work and a whole lot more fruitful.

Interested in harvesting low-hanging profits to grow your sales and your business? Discover how >>

– Charlie

Marketing Ideas that Make YOU Money

P.S. Add a few thousand dollars here and a few there each month and within a few months you’ll be on your way to making an additional $100,000 to $300,000 or more this year.

Use This Marketing Strategy to Increase Web Sales by 300% This Month

By Charlie Cook | July 15, 2008

“My web site stinks! I’ve been spending thousands of dollars a week on pay-per-click ads but they’re not paying for themselves. I’m only getting a few leads and sales from my site. What am doing wrong? How do I get my web site to sell?”
Martha C., NY

What’s Missing From Your Web Site?
Are you wondering why all the people who come to your web site don’t contact you or buy from you? You know you’ve got top quality products and services, but few visitors to your site are staying long enough to read the details, much less contact you or buy from you.

Want to know the secret marketing strategy to making your web site highly profitable? Use this link>>

Shift Your Focus Away From Traffic
Most web site owners do what Martha did. They put up a web site and then they focus on getting all the traffic they can to their site. Typically the fastest way to do this is to spend money on pay-per-click advertising. That’s the first and biggest mistake!

I regularly talk to web site owners who’ve spent thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars a month on pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization. They’re spending money hand over fist on driving traffic to their sites and still not breaking even.

Imagine you have a relatively new car. It still has that distinctive new car smell, but it has a major defect. Every time you turn the engine on, all you can do is rev the engine. You can’t get the car in gear. Obviously your shiny new car isn’t taking you anywhere.

What would you do? You’d get your engine repaired immediately.

Find out the fastest way to fix your site >>

Like your car, if your web site isn’t doing it’s most basic job, you won’t move forward. No matter how much money you spend to bring traffic to your site, if you aren’t converting traffic to leads and sales, your site won’t be profitable. There are thousands of web sites selling products and services that customers want. Very few of them successfully convert traffic to profits.

Why Most People Focus On Traffic and Why You Shouldn’t
Most web site owners focus their spending on getting more traffic to their sites for a simple reason; it’s easy. Just cut the check for your SEO expert, or send the payments to Google or one of the other pay-per-click advertising services, and the problem is taken care of, right? Wrong.

Traffic Comes After Conversion
Do the math. If your web site isn’t converting visitors to sales now, how is sending more traffic to your site going to help?

On the other hand, by making a few simple changes to your marketing strategy and web site, you can easily increase your site conversion rates by 300%. Make a few more design and copy changes, and you could do what one of my clients did; increase your conversion rates by 1,700%.

Want to know how you can increase sales by 300%? Get the answer here >>

How to Convert Visitors To Buyers
You want the people who come to your web site to stay, read your pages and to either contact you by email or phone and to buy from you. What’s the fastest and most cost efficient way to make this happen?

1. Do you know anyone who owns an iPod? They’ve sold lot hotcakes and made Apple an unbelievable amount of money for two reasons: they look cool and they are amazingly easy to use. That’s what your web site should be too, appealing and easy to use.

Use the design of your site to make it clear what you want people to read first, second and third. Lead them to take the actions you want them to take.

2. Focus your marketing copy on your prospects’ problems and goals. Remember; your objective is to help people buy, not to hit them over the head with a sales pitch about your products or services.

3. Focus every page of your site on one or both of the following: generating leads (so you can follow up) and/or helping people get the product or service they want.

4. Remember that your site needs to establish you or your company as the trusted, expert source to go to for your particular product niche. Audio and video testimonials provide the social proof you need and with relevant, meaningful content are essential to establishing this.

I’m always amazed at how many web site owners expect to use their web site to increase sales by hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. and then spend so little time or effort creating a site that actually sells. And when the site doesn’t perform, they keep throwing money at advertising to bring traffic to a site that doesn’t work.

I know you’re smarter than that, which is why I want you to avoid this mistake. Discover how easy it is to increase sales from your web site. >>

To your success,

Charlie

P.S. Still on the fence about where to spend your online marketing dollars? Consider this. If you spent the same amount of time or money on increasing your conversion rates as you did on increasing traffic, you’d get four to twenty times the return.

Interested in finding out how to increase web sales? >>

P.P.S. Something is wrong with the math! Most web site owners spend more on advertising their site than they do on creating a site that sells. If you want your web site to make you your next hundred thousand or half million, isn’t it worth finding out how to do it?

Find out the secrets to creating a top-selling site >>

How To Profit From The Recession – Small Business Marketing Tips

By Charlie Cook | July 14, 2008

What do most small business owners do when faced with a recession?
What do they do when buyers are fewer and far between?

Earlier this week I blogged about how to grow your business when times are tough and I know that your instincts may be to do the wrong thing.

The natural tendency is to get scared and cut back on your marketing and hope that the downturn is short lived and you have cash to spend when business picks up.

Is this the right strategy? Is running scared the prudent path to higher profits?

For most businesses, running scared during a market downturn will only guarantee that they will come out at the bottom, when and if the market ever picks up. Builders are a great example.

When it was easy to get a mortgage, builders had buyers lined up ten deep at their door. All they needed was a business card and a yellow page listing to get all the clients they could handle. Here in Connecticut, unless you wanted to build a house of over 6,000 square feet you couldn’t even get a builder to return your calls.

After ten or more years of easy money, the lending landscape has changed and any builder who thinks that waiting this out is the right solution will be out of business in a few years. It could easily be another ten years before interest rates peak and come down stimulating the next building boom.

I know you’re smarter than to think you can just wait out this recession. Smart business owners see recessions as the chance get ahead while others are running scared.

How can you prosper in this recession?
Use this proven small business marketing strategy >>

Even in a downturn you can always find more business than you can handle if you know how to market your business. The real estate market is a good example.

One real estate broker called me from Atlanta where prices are down 7% and monthly sales are down by 20%. Instead of crying about spilt milk or running scared he saw this downturn as a great chance to end up making more.

His reasoning was that, while sales were down, 3,564 homes sold in April. With an average commission of $10,000 all he needed to do was instead of just selling one, sell three per month and he’d be making plenty.

Tough times can be great for business because they winnow out the less than savvy marketers and leave the playing field wide-open for smart people like you. Fewer competitors + smarter marketing = more business for you!

If you act scared or market defensively – you’ll see your sales and profits plummet – and they may never recover.

Instead use your marketing to position yourself as the go to expert, continue to build strong relationships with prospects and generate referrals – you’ll prosper even in this recession and when the economy picks up you’ll find yourself ahead of your competitors.

The choice is yours.

Find out the simple marketing solution I used to make the past six months of this recession my best ever >>

To Your Success,

Charlie
Proven Small Business Marketing Ideas

How to Sell More In Any Economy – Small Business Marketing

By Charlie Cook | June 25, 2008

“I just lost my biggest client because of a corporate cost cutting mandate. I was getting 60% of my business from them! What do I do?” – Bob, Minneapolis MN

I hear more and more small business owners worrying about a business slowdown, if they aren’t already feeling the effects of one. Have you ever lost a major client unexpectedly or seen your sales drop over a short period? It can take your business months or even years to recover. How do you keep this from happening, especially in an uncertain economy?

My daughter lives in New York City and works across town from her apartment. Now that it’s June and stays light later, she likes to walk home through Central Park.

When she heads out the door in the morning, she pops a small folding umbrella in her bag. That way in case a passing summer rainstorm catches her in the park, she can stay dry.

Keeping your business from getting drenched and your profits dry also requires planning and preparation.

What’s the secret to growing your business in any economy? Find out >>

Umbrella Marketing
There are always opportunities for small businesses and entrepreneurs – it just takes planning and preparation to create them.

If you lived in a place where afternoon rain showers were common, or if you looked out the window and saw threatening rain clouds, you’d take an umbrella with you when you left the house, too. Here’s how to provide your business with the same protection so you can keep a steady stream of profits coming in.

Want to maintain your profits, even in a downturn? Discover how >>

Here are a few examples:

In May, GM’s sales were down by almost 30%, Toyota’s on the other hand were essentially flat. GM and Toyota are both in the same industry. How is it that one’s sales are down by 30% and the other’s sales are holding steady?

Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave for the last 20 years, you knew that oil supplies are dwindling, new sources are harder to tap, and demand from China and other developing countries is growing fast. Gas prices were going to go up. GM’s response was to keep selling their gas guzzling but highly profitable SUVs. Only now that sales have tanked (sorry, bad pun) and they’re shutting factories are they talking about making smaller, fuel efficient cars.

Toyota, on the contrary, has been designing and building fuel efficient cars as well as SUVs for the last decade. They’ve profited on both ends, when gas prices were lower and SUVs were in demand, and now, when gas prices are going up and consumers want better fuel economy.

What kind of business do you want to be running, a GM or a Toyota?

With banks tightening credit, it’s harder and harder to get a loan for that new car you want. Here’s what one car dealer did to keep his sales up; a year or so ago he saw the start of the credit-tightening trend and refocused his marketing on selling used cars. His business doubled in the past twelve months.

Residential real estate sales have dropped by 15 to 50%, depending on location. That took a bite out of one realtor’s income.

Then she noticed that while U.S. buyers were less likely to buy more and more foreign buyers were showing interest thanks to the dropping dollar.

Customers from Canada, Germany, Norway and elsewhere see the dropping value of the dollar as a great real estate investment opportunity. When she target these buyers, her sales shot up.

Do you have a client who provides you with 60% of your sales, like Bob did? What should you do to protect your business? Find the answer here >>

I doubt that I’m the first one to warn you about the problems with building your business around one “gorilla” client. What you should know if that there is a good chance that you’ll lose that client through no fault of your own sometime in the future.

To keep your business growing, you need to pack a small business marketing umbrella. Create a small business marketing plan that keeps new business coming in so that when the economy falters or existing clients sign off, your business keeps growing and you stay dry, comfortable and profitable.

You’ll be amazed at how much more you can make in any economy with a simple umbrella marketing strategy. Get the details here >>

To your success,

Charlie
Providing Proven Small Business Marketing Ideas You Can Use

P.S. It happened to me 3 years ago. I lost one client who had reserved 25% of my coaching time. When a senior VP shut down all consultant spending, my contract went out the window even though it was providing a huge return on investment.

It didn’t make me happy but thanks to a diversified small business marketing strategy my overall sales continued to grow. What to know how I did it? Here’s how >>

P.P.S. A few simple steps can help you grow your business in any economy. If you don’t take them who will? Start here >>

The Small Business Marketing Secret to Getting Referrals

By Charlie Cook | June 10, 2008

“I get most of my new business from referrals.”

Every small business owner and marketer wants to be able to say these 9 words. When you can say this, it means you aren’t struggling to increase leads or frustrated with trying to convince prospects to buy from you.

When it’s true, your clients and business associates are doing your marketing for you.

When a prospect is referred to you, they’re relying on someone else, another client or a supplier to vouch for you and your products and your services. Your credibility and the value you provide is already established.

And this is a big relief because I don’t know anybody who truly enjoys having to prove themselves to prospects.

Typically you’ll convert 5 to 7 times as many referred prospects to clients. Let me repeat that; typically, you’ll convert 5 to 7 times as many prospects that come to you through referrals. Referrals make it a lot easier to be highly profitable.

For most small business owners and sales people the occasional referral drops out of the sky like a pleasant surprise. Don’t you love it when a new client is sent your way pre-sold and ready to buy? Everyone does!

If you like getting referrals so much, and they are so profitable, what are you doing to generate more? For most business owners and sales people the answer is… nothing.

What can you do to generate a steady stream of referrals so you can grow your business by leaps and bounds?

Want to know what works? Use this link >>

The 2 Marketing Secrets to Generating Referrals
The simple truth is that generating more referrals is as easy as
growing grass.

Recently my wife and I decided to do something about our sorry-looking lawn. We had done only the bare minimum of maintenance for several years. Last fall we surveyed the weeds and bare patches and decided we wanted to actually grow some grass.

After pulling out the weeds, what was left was pretty ugly. The first step was to spread grass seed. The next was to make sure it was watered twice a day. Without regular watering, as you know the seed would just dry up and blow away.

Here in Connecticut, rain is a random event. If we relied on nature there was a good chance the seed wouldn’t germinate and we’d be left with patches of dirt instead.

The solution? We cranked up the automatic sprinkler system. If you have one you know you can set it to water your lawn twice a day as we did. Now a few weeks later, the seed has sprouted and our lawn has filled completely filled in and looks great.

Want to fill in your sales with referrals so you can increase your profits? Get the details here >>

Generating a steady stream of referrals is the same as growing grass. Here’s the small business marketing ideas you need:

1. Prepare the Seed
To generate more referrals, plant the seeds with your best salespeople. Give your existing clients, suppliers and sales partners the marketing materials they need to promote you so they can spread the word.

This can be as simple as giving them the words to use to describe your business. A concise statement (8 to 12 words) of the problems you solve and the benefits of your products and services will help them spread the word. They can easily explain the value of contacting you to people they know.

You could go beyond just sharing your marketing message and produce a client-focused brochure that paints a clear picture of the situations you help people with and details the benefits of your services.

Or write and share articles that entertain and educate, and help prospects see you as the go-to expert.

And you could make sure that all of this information is readily accessible on your web site, so that existing clients can point people to your site.

In sum, if you want to generate more referrals, give your network of referral partners the right small business marketing tools to promote you.

2. Make It Rain Every Day
The second marketing secret to generating referrals is to make the process less random. We needed the automatic sprinklers to make our grass grow; you need an automated system for following up with your referral partners.

Stay in touch on a regular basis so they know what to do and when to do it. I schedule a call every month with each of my super affiliates, and then ask them to commit to a schedule of mailings and activities they can to do that will send referrals my way.

As a result, I can’t say that 100% of my business comes from referrals, but over 50% does. You can do the same by applying these two simple strategies.

Ready to discover the rest of the secrets to growing your profits that most business owners and marketers will never know or apply? Find out how to reach and exceed your business goals >>

Charlie
Revealing the Small Business Marketing Ideas Used By Self-Made Millionaires

Where To Focus Your Small Business Marketing?

By Charlie Cook | April 24, 2008

Where To Find The Most Clients…

Are you pulling in new clients one by one when you could be bringing them in by the dozens or even hundreds? Most people make the mistake of marketing to bring in new leads individually when they could be bringing many at a time.

If you fished for a living and had the choice of two places to drop your nets, where would you go fishing – in the spot where you’d identified one big whopper, or the place with a school of hundreds of fish?

Obviously you’d seek out locations where you’d catch the most fish with the least effort and cost. Shouldn’t you be doing the same with your marketing?

Every business has at least two sources of profitable prospects.

Individual Prospects
You’ve got loyal clients who may be big spenders. These clients should be treasured, but if you’re like most business owners, you need more than one or two ‘gorilla’ clients to keep your business growing.

Referral Partners
In any business, referral partners are those people who can send you not just one client, but dozens or in my case thousands.

What’s a referral partner? It’s anyone who targets and or influences your target market. In my business the best referral partners are others who have a list of 50,000 or more small business owners and entrepreneurs. For one of my clients who sells hearing aids referral partners include companies that target products to the aging baby boomer market.

The first step to growing your business by leaps and bounds is to identify potential referral partners. Then work out the details to provide them with a share of the profits to motivate them to promote your products and services.

Want to know the secrets to growing your business in leaps and bounds? Use this link to get the answer >>

In the last 12 months I used this simple referral partner strategy to increase my annual sales by 100%. At the beginning of 2007, I created a campaign targeting marketing partners who had the potential to send me huge numbers of new customers.

It was more work to develop a relationship with these partners than to sign up an individual client, but the return can bring in 50 to 100 times as many sales, at least in my business.

What’s the fastest way to grow your business?

Recently Joan, who owns a printing service in Philadelphia, signed up for my marketing mentoring services. Joan told me her sales were stagnant at $5,000,000. She wants to push sales to at least $7,000,000 in the next year.

When I asked her where her present sales were coming from she told me that 60% was from individual clients and the remaining 40%, or $2,000,000, was from one print broker.

As I’m sure you have deduced, the fastest way for Joan to grow her business won’t be in spending all her time bringing in individual clients. Instead the simple solution is to target a few more print brokers. Add one and she’d reach her goal. Add two or three and she’d double her business.

Want to double your business this year? Use this link >>

Marketing is like bowling.

To win you don’t aim to hit each bowling pin, one by one. The winning strategy is to hit strikes and knock down all ten pins with one ball. Of course it’s harder to do but bowlers who hit the most pins with the fewest balls win every time.

So where should you focus your marketing?

Prioritize your time and efforts based on your marketing goals.

Some businesses get 100% of their sales from marketing partners but until you do I wouldn’t recommend abandoning marketing to individual clients. The key is to prioritize your time and efforts based on your marketing goals.

For example, if you’d like to get 50% of your sales from referral partners, allocate 50% of your time and marketing budget to building these super-profitable relationships.

How much time are you spending now on developing referral partnerships?

Don’t be embarrassed if your answer is close to zero. Most businesses neglect their biggest sources of potential profit. Takes the following three steps to change this now.

Step 1 – Set Aside the Time
Joan knew she wasn’t going to make any progress with her marketing until she could carve out the time to work on it. Every time she set foot in her printing plant, she was deluged with questions from her staff. Finally, after months of hearing me insist on it, she took a big step and decided to work from home one morning a week so she could devote time to marketing.

Step 2 – Have a Marketing Plan
Setting aside time to work on marketing won’t pay off unless you know what to do and how to do it. Find out what works to attract both individual clients and marketing partners. Use this link to get the details >>

Step 3 – Take Action
Successful marketers and business owners take action to bring in new clients, including these:
– Developing the tools their marketing partners need to promote them,
– Following up every couple of weeks with their prospects and marketing partners to build and maintain the relationship.

Are you an action-oriented business owner or marketer who is focused on success?

Then you’ll want to take the next step and discover where and how to focus your marketing to maximize your profits. Use this link to get the details >>

Gotta go. I need to call a couple of referral partners and see if I can double sales again this year.

Charlie
Small Business Marketing That Sells

Is It The Economy? – Try Another Excuse!

By Charlie Cook | April 15, 2008

Listen to the podcast of this blog online with this link >>

Were your sales stagnant last year? How was the first quarter of 2008?

What’s the problem? Is it the economy?

With all the news about the mortgage meltdown, sinking real estate values, rising unemployment and warnings of a recession, it’s easy to feel anxious and pessimistic. But don’t assume that your slow sales can be blamed on a faltering economy.

It’s true that banks are tight about lending and your customers are cautious about spending, but that doesn’t mean you can’t continue to grow your business.

There are profits to be made in any almost all economy, even in areas you’d think would be the hardest hit.

During the last week of March I took a vacation with my son in British Columbia to check out Revelstoke, a new Canadian ski resort. At a time when real estate values are sinking, the economy is slumping and the ski industry is stagnating, someone had the audacity to open a new ski resort.

And even crazier, the proposed resort isn’t anywhere near a population center. It’s at least a five-hour drive from the airports in Vancouver or Calgary. For many U.S. and Canadian residents, it’s more or less inaccessible. It took us over 18 hours to get there from Connecticut.

As you drive up the recently graded dirt road to the mountain, you see no condos, no golf course, and no model ski homes. Other than some amazing ski terrain and two new lifts, the place is more mud and vision than reality. (We went cat skiing but here’s a video of heli skiing)

So what happened when they put their first real estate offering on the market?

It sold out in 2 hours!
How? With some great marketing!

What’s the secret to creating a huge demand and successful sales campaigns?

I’d hired a driver to get us home from our return flight in the middle of the night. On the way, our driver told us that his business was down by over 50% from last year. The following day, I talked to another limo service that was growing steadily at 10% each month.

The big question is,

Is the economy to blame, or is it your marketing?

Conventional wisdom has it that your sales will fall off in a down economy, but that will be true only if you let it happen.

One of my clients came to me for coaching after laying off all his employees as a result of sinking sales last year. We retooled his marketing plan and wrote a new marketing message. One month later, he told he he’d never brought in so much new business in such a short period of time in the eight years since he’d opened for business.

Ready to see your sales take off even in a down economy? Use this simple strategy >>

If you’re using the economy as an excuse for not growing your business this year, think again. Sure, it’s easier to grow a business when money is plentiful. But when spending shrinks, the truly successful separate themselves from their peers and keep their businesses growing.

These people are leaders who see even the most challenging situation as a problem to solve. They look for answers and then take action. If you’re a leader, you can make your business more successful in almost any type of economy by getting the knowledge you need to grow your business.

Others look for someone or something else to blame for their problems or misfortune. ‘Blamers’ let themselves get stuck. Blaming others and looking for excuses is a way to avoid fixing something that’s broken.

Are you a Leader or a Blamer?

If you’re leader who wants to put your business on the fast track to success – take action and find out what works >>

Introducing More Business podcasts.
To listen to the podcast online, use this link >>

– Charlie
Marketing Strategies That Get… Results

I Want to Send You on Vacation When You Get With This Small Business Marketing Strategy

By Charlie Cook | March 18, 2008

This Friday I’m flying out to Calgary, Canada with my son for our annual steep and deep ski trip. Each year we spend a week together skiing ourselves silly in out of the way places like Kicking Horse and Revelstoke in British Columbia that most people haven’t heard of.

And I got to thinking why shouldn’t you get to go on a vacation too?

I’ve been successful enough to own a home here in Greenwich Connecticut and a ski home in Vermont and have the time to take great vacations. I don’t mean to brag and it’s not that I’m a genius or just lucky.

I can take time off to go skiing with my son in the winter or hiking with my wife in the summer because of one thing. I have a marketing system that works 365 days a year, whether I’m working or not, to grow my business. And it’s thanks to this marketing system that I can take time off to go away and play.

Wish you could do the same? Wish you could discover how to continue to grow your business in any economy and be successful enough to take plenty of vacations?

Don’t envy me – join me in using the same strategy to be successful too. You can use my marketing system to grow and automate your business. And that’s not all, I’m going to go one step further and give you a vacation too to one of three destinations you’re familiar with. How’s that for over delivering?

Then when you take your vacation to Hawaii, Florida or Las Vegas, make sure to send me a postcard and tell me about your trip, after all I gave you the vacation.

Interested? Use this link >>

While I want you to be outrageously successful and hard work is important, vacations are just as important. You owe it to yourself to take a break and when you come back you’ll be even more charged up and ready to put my marketing ideas to use to grow your business.

For this week only I’m giving away a vacation certificate when you grab my Make More Work Less Small Business Marketing Success System special bundle that includes my three most comprehensive marketing manuals. Use this link to see what’s included >>

Obviously I can only give away so much, and this offer only applies to the first 7 orders this week. So if you want to get everything you need to grow your business and get the vacation you deserve use this link >>

Got to go. I need to start packing for my trip,

Charlie

P.S. Use this link to grow your business and get a vacation too >>