Do you enjoy marketing your business or is it more like pulling teeth? Many small business owners dislike marketing their businesses as much as a root canal.

Do you find marketing is a pain and wish you could avoid marketing your business altogether? Here’s a simple strategy you can use to market your business marketing strategy that that’s better than Novocaine.

It not only numbs the pain but gives you all the clients you want. Get the details in this week’s article on a pain free marketing strategy with this link>

Charlie
Marketing Strategies That Put You Ahead of the Competition

What’s the one marketing strategy you can use this week – and every week – to quadruple your sales?

In case you’ve forgotten, Valentine’s Day is this Thursday the 14th. Your spouse or significant other would appreciate your remembering the day by giving them flowers or a gift, or at least a card. For the last couple of years I’ve given my wife orchids, which last for months and months as a reminder of my undying affection.

But of course it’s not the chocolates that you give on Valentine’s Day that matter; it truly is the thought that counts. To keep the relationship strong, make sure your big squeeze knows that you’re thinking of him or her and they will think of you, too.

Why am I reminding you about Valentine’s Day, and what does romance have to do with marketing strategies?

Obviously, it’s about building and maintaining relationships. Can you imagine what would happen to your relationship with your significant other if you didn’t contact them for months on end? They’d probably forget about you, too. Ouch!

Likewise with your prospects and clients. If you don’t follow up and stay in touch with them, they won’t remember you and you won’t get their business.

I’m not suggesting that you send all your prospects sentimental Valentine’s Day cards. That’d be a little weird. But do put in place a simple follow-up system to help clients remember you, get to know you, and see you as the go-to expert. Then they’ll want to buy from you.

What’s the best way to follow up and increase your sales? Use this link to get the answer >>

Most business owners and entrepreneurs work hard to generate leads but they’re missing the follow-up system to generate the sale. In fact, 80% of potential sales are lost due to lack of follow-up.

If you had an effective follow-up system, you could be generating 5 times as many sales.

What’s keeping you from setting up your follow-up system?

Too many business owners and salespeople think of follow-up as a contact with a prospect in order to make the sale. And how many times does a prospect want to hear from you asking for the sale?

The answer is never, not even once, so contacting them repeatedly to try to sell them is not only annoying, but can kill the sale. It’s true that persistence can pay off, but not if you’re doing the wrong thing over and over.

So what do you do? Use this link to discover how to eliminate obstacles to sales >>

Although prospects don’t like to have someone try to sell them, they like to be informed and entertained, and ultimately they want to buy the goods and services they need. Remember the Valentine’s Day card; when you give it you’re not trying to sell the person. You’re letting them know you’re thinking of them and their needs. When they receive your message, they think of you.

What’s the best way to follow-up with prospects and clients?

Tell them a story that makes a point. Entertain them and they’ll read your message and think of you. Tell them about one of your clients, their situation and how you helped them. Make it personal and you’ll build the relationship.

Generate more sales by focusing on what your prospects and clients want, not by focusing on selling.

Prospects want:

– To be assured that you understand their concerns.

– To get to know you and trust you before they’ll buy from you.

– To understand how you can help them

– To know the value of your products and services relative to the results they provide.

– Proof that your products and services do what you say they do.

What’s the secret to generating five times as many sales?
If you want to see your sales grow without spending more on ads or mailings or making more calls, start by evaluating and improving your follow-up marketing strategy. Once you know what to do it’s just a matter of setting up the follow-up activities as part of your marketing system so they happen automatically to convert prospects to customers and customers to repeat customers.

Are you ready to make a giant leap in your sales and earnings?

You could keep using the same selling strategy you are now and continue to get the same results. Wouldn’t you rather uncover the secret to making five times as much?

Use this link to discover how to eliminate the obstacles to sales and see your revenue soar >>

Your prospects are hungry for ideas and information. They want to get to know you in the hope that you can help them. Use your follow-up emails, calls, mailings and other media to engage your prospects and build relationships. Then give them what they want and your sales will take off.

And if you haven’t done so already, run out and get a card or gift for your Valentine and win some smiles from the one you love.

Happy Valentines Day,

Charlie
Marketing Strategies That Get… Results

Use this link for more marketing strategies that will boost your bottom line >>

Can you start or grow a business without spending a fortune on advertising? Are there any low cost marketing strategies that really work?

Whether you’re launching a business on a shoestring budget or you want to grow your business without spending more than you need to, this should be a question you’ve asked yourself at least once. The answer is yes, there is a low cost marketing strategy that really works, and I used it to make my first million online.

In the late ’90s I created a web site that reviewed and ranked the scores of emerging search engines. It took me two weeks of solid work to build the site. Then once a week I wrote a review of a new search engine and added the best of these to the growing directory of available search engines.

Each time I posted a review on my site and shared with the media, I was positioning myself as the expert on the emerging field of search engines.

The result was that within a few months, I got requests for interviews from Success Magazine, National Public Radio and a host of other publications. Traffic to my site soared. Within a year of launching my site I accepted an offer to sell it and my expertise to one of the largest information technology sites on the web for approximately 500 times my initial costs.

How can you too use your web site to position yourself for success? Get the details >>

The marketing strategy is to position yourself as the go-to expert in your field. It costs next to nothing and is the key to your success. My marketing articles are regularly picked up by hundreds of publications and distributed worldwide, generating sales at no cost and giving me more publicity than I could ever buy with advertising.

Why does expert positioning work?

If you are looking for ideas to grow your business, or cut your taxes, or for legal advice, whom are you going to turn to? Your neighbor, someone listed in the yellow pages, or to the person who regularly share ideas and knows what they are talking about?

Imagine two accountants, Sarah and Bob. Both are the best in the business and have exactly the same training, experience, knowledge and charge the same. The only difference is that each month Sarah sends you an idea about how to manage your finances or cut your taxes.

When it comes time to picking an accountant, whom are you going to hire? The one whose name you remember and whose opinions you’ve come to trust. You’re going to hire Sarah, who has positioned herself as the expert. While Bob may have the same knowledge and expertise, you aren’t certain of that and, in fact, have forgotten who he is.

Expert positioning works to help your prospects get to know you, remember you and see you as the person to go to when they have a question and a need. Do this and they’ll be much more likely to buy from you than from your competitors.

Ready to discover how to use expert positioning to grow your business? Use this link to get the details >>

Who can use expert positioning to grow their business?

Positioning yourself as the expert can help you no matter what you sell. You don’t have to have an advanced academic degree to use expert positioning to grow your business. You do need to be an expert in an area relevant to your business.

Here’s how one taxi driver used expert positioning to triple his sales.

A couple of weeks ago, my family flew down to sunny Nassau in the Bahamas for my nephew’s wedding. At the airport we climbed into a cab for the thirty-minute ride to our hotel. As soon as we were under way, the cab driver started sharing information about the island’s history, places to see, the best restaurants, when and where to view the local Junkanoo festival that was happening that night, etc.

By the time we reached the hotel, our taxi driver had positioned himself as the go-to expert on Nassau. I’m sure every other Bahamian taxi driver knew the same information, but by sharing it with us our driver had won our confidence and gained a competitive advantage over the other drivers. As we paid him for the ride, we asked him for his card so we could hire him for additional trips and for the return ride to the airport.

Want to put your business in one of the top positions in your industry?

Position yourself as an expert. Discover how with this link >>

Charlie
Small Business Marketing Strategies That Gets Results

Whether 2007 was a good, bad or indifferent year for your business, you’d like to make 2008 even better. What’s it going to take?

I was about to call it quits for the day when the phone rang. It was Donald Monroe calling from Sterling, Virginia. He told me that he wanted to learn everything he can about marketing his business. When I asked Donald which of my small business marketing manuals he was interested in, he answered, “all of them.” Why was he so eager to improve his marketing? Was his business in the dumps?

Read this week’s small business marketing article to find out >>

Happy Holidays,

– Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Get… Results

What’s that ringing sound you hear at this time of year? It’s the sound of store 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 strategies.

Find out more in this weeks marketing strategy article >>

Could you double your sales in the next two or three months? Use the marketing strategy below.

In November I doubled my sales from what they were just two months ago in September and I saw them increase by over 300% from what they were a year ago.

I’ve helped some of my clients do even better. One client quadrupled sales in two years; one increased sales by a factor of 20 over a period of four years.

Yes, I’m blowing my own horn a little, but I want you to understand that it really is possible to double or triple your sales in a relatively short amount of time.

Before you read another word, ask yourself:

– How much more income could you bring in if you doubled or tripled your sales?
– Do you have this number written down or noted somewhere on your computer?

Can you actually do it? Can you realistically double your sales? The answer to this question should be a resounding “Yes!”

What’s the secret to making these kind of outrageous gains? Do you need to put in even more hours of work? Do you need to double your marketing budget?

The answer to both of these questions is “No!” It’s not a matter of working harder or spending huge sums. The answer lies in understanding the 80/20 rule and knowing how to work with it.

In 1906 Vilfredo Pareto, a French-Italian sociologist, economist and philosopher, noted that in Italy 80% of the wealth, the real estate, was owned by 20% of the people. The same observation applies in marketing. On average, 80% of sales revenue comes from 20% of marketing activities.

Which key marketing strategies can generate 80% of your sales? Find the answer here >>

How can you use the 80/20 rule? Here are 3 options to choose from.

A. You could stop doing the 80% of marketing activities that aren’t working. Think how much money and time you’d save and how much higher your profit margins would be. Instead of spending two days a week marketing you could do it all in 4 hours and use your time to develop new products – or take the day off and play golf or go skiing, like I do.

B. Instead of spending only 20% of your marketing efforts on what works you could spend 100% of your marketing time and money on the marketing strategies and tasks that generate leads, sales and repeat sales.

The result? You’d generate five times as many sales and five times the profits. What would you do with all that income?

C. You could continue doing what you’re doing now, spending 80% of your time on marketing that isn’t working. Don’t you want to better than this?

In summary;
– 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your clients.
– 80% of your income will come from 20% of your marketing activity.

Understand this and you can make a lot more money.

You can bring in two to four times as much revenue by dumping the clients who take up 80% of your time. Concentrate your marketing to attract more of the ideal clients who bring long-term profitability. Clients I’ve worked with, from SEO firms to therapists, have done this and seen immediate and long lasting increases in income.

Ready to discover which 20% of marketing activities can generate 80% of your sales? Get the answers here >>

Sue owns a growing web development firm and wants to increase sales from $300,000 a year to $450,000. Her primary market is small businesses in New England. Where did she invest her marketing dollars?

She booked a trip to Las Vegas for herself and 2 of her staff to man a booth at an Internet trade show where she’s pitching to industry insiders, not her target market. Cost? $10,000 in expenses, not including the time invested.

The above example may be extreme, but have you ever sent out a mailing or email broadcast, bought ad space, or maintained a website that didn’t get the results you wanted? Most small business owners stay small because they make this marketing mistake over and over.

You’re bound to fail if you spend your time and your marketing dollars on the wrong things – or use your marketing tools in the wrong way – over and over. No matter how hard you work, you’ll be frustrated.

The key to multiplying your sales is knowing where and how to market your business. For example, each week I invest several hours in joint venture marketing efforts and in keeping in regular contact with my prospects and clients.

My efforts are focused on building my list of interested, qualified prospects and on staying in touch with prospects and clients by writing at least one newsletter a week. Why these two activities? Because that’s how I make 90% of my sales. I concentrate all my time spent on marketing on the activities that bring in the most sales.

Want to easily double or quadruple your sales? You can do it by applying the 80/20 rule. Use this link to find out how >>

Put the 80/20 rule to use; work smart, work less and make more and you, too, can live the life you want.

Charlie
Marketing Ideas That Make You Money

Ever hit your finger with a hammer when you were hanging a picture on the wall? It hurts! Make this painful mistake once, and you’ll swing more carefully the next time, and try to improve your aim. With practice, you’ll hit the nail on the head and get the job done.

Is your marketing also missing the mark? That will hurt your bottom line. Banging away with the same failing marketing strategy is like hitting your finger over and over, all pain and no gain. Believe it or not, I know many small business owners that do exactly this.

Ron was one of them. He mailed 5,000 postcards to generate leads for his business. When he only got one response, he tried again, with the same result.

Ron had a web site that was only bringing in a trickle of leads, so he hired a marketing firm to rewrite and rebuild it at a cost of $40,000. What happened? The new site was even worse than the original one. He stopped getting any leads at all from the web.

Ron was spending more and more and getting fewer and fewer leads and sales. I wish I were making this up, but I’m not, and Ron is only one example of many I could tell you about.

Want to avoid making the same marketing mistake?

Use this link to find out how to get results with your marketing >>

What was Ron doing wrong?

Ron was missing a lead building strategy, one that converted prospects to clients and instead was focused on the individual marketing tools, postcards, ads, and websites.

A hammer is just a tool and if you don’t know how to aim it you’re going to do damage to your fingers and the wall and maybe even need a bigger picture to cover the hole you’ve made. And, if you’re missing the nail and hitting your fingers, an even bigger sledge hammer isn’t the solution either.

Ads, postcards, websites and any other marketing tool you use only work when you know how to aim them. Ron didn’t have a marketing strategy to help him target his marketing efforts. Worse, the marketing firm he hired took $40,000 of his money and gave him a handful of marketing tools that got even fewer results than the ones he’d had.

If your marketing isn’t generating the results your business needs, the answer isn’t spending more on doing the same thing or just shooting wildly and hoping for the best. That’d be like hammering your fingers again and again.

The answer is finding out what works to get results. To make your marketing bring in more business you need to know the triggers that prompt prospects to respond and the simple steps to take to get them to become buyers.

Have you ever spent money on marketing that didn’t get the results you wanted? Ready to stop wasting your valuable resources and finally find out what works? Use this link to hit your marketing targets >>

Charlie
Marketing Ideas That Work