Charlie Cook's MArketing for Success Insider's Club

 

The Top Experts Reveal Small Business Marketing Strategies
That Get Results In This Economy

How I Lost a Great Client…

By Charlie Cook   |   April 16, 2008

Ever have a client you really liked working with quit? You know how upsetting it can be.

This week, one of my favorite clients, wrote me to let me know that he wanted to stop working with me after just two months.

Did I blow it, tick him off or what? You be the judge.

Kris Simmons, of FireEye Productions owns a web and video production company. In 2007 he’d seen a devastating slow down in business and been forced to layoff most of his staff. Kris had signed up as a mentoring client in early February of 2008.

He thought his business was a victim of the slowing economy but believed there were still plenty of clients out there if only he could get their attention and their business. Then 8 weeks after signing up Kris quit!

Why? Why did Kris quit as a mentoring client?

From the start, Kris jumped on each strategy and idea I provided him and put as many of them as he could to use. The result?

Kris sold 30 projects in less than two months, which in his words “Is HUGE!” In fact it was more than he’d ever signed up in any two-month period since he started his business eight years ago and to boot he did it in the midst of a recession.

Kris wrote me to say that he had to stop working with me because even with outsourcing 90% of the new projects, he was working around the clock to keep up with the demand that I’d helped him tap. With all the new clients he’d landed he didn’t have time to keep up with the mentoring program and wanted to stop working together, at least for now.

I’ll miss working with Kris. He was fun to work with and most importantly followed through on the strategies and ideas I shared with him.

Want to benefit from my misfortune?

Fill Kris’s spot.

I now have one new space available in my mentoring program and if you act quickly and apply and you’re accepted you could be the next person to discover how to get more business than you ever imagined.

Use this link to apply >>

To your success,

Charlie
www.marketingforsuccess.com

P.S. Be forewarned! Kris had the same complaint that other clients have mentioned in the past. He told me I should have warned him about the tsunami of business that he could expect.

So consider yourself warned. The marketing strategies and ideas I share with my clients can bring you in more new business than you ever imagined.

P.S. II Want to see what Kris had to say? Use this link to view his video comments online >>

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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

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How Effective Is Your Small Business Marketing?

By Charlie Cook   |   April 7, 2008

How well does your small business marketing work? Use this marketing checklist marketing to help prospects become clients and customers today.

– Charlie
Proven Small Business Marketing

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3 Steps to Advertising That Sells- Small Business Marketing Secrets

By Charlie Cook   |   April 5, 2008

Most small business owners spend tens of thousands of dollars each year on advertising that doesn’t work. They spend thousands of dollars on print and pay per click advertising that costs more than it brings in in sales. Sound familiar?

The secret to using ads to generate more revenue is to stop using them to sell.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re saying to yourself, “aren’t ads supposed to sell?”

The answer is NO!

Click here to discover how use advertising to market and grow your business in this week’s article >>

Charlie
Small Business Marketing That Puts You Ahead of the Competition

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3 Breakthrough Marketing Ideas to Help You Reach Your Goals…

By Charlie Cook   |   April 3, 2008

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

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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 >>

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What Marketing Strategies Does Oprah Use?

By Charlie Cook   |   March 12, 2008

Should you emulate the marketing strategies of successful companies like Google, Apple, Starbucks, Sony, Dell, or Coca-Cola? It’s true that these companies have name recognition throughout the world, and this gives them tremendous clout in their markets. But following their lead is a waste of your time and money.

Every entrepreneur and small business owner wants to build their brand and their name recognition to increase sales. But approaching branding the way the biggest companies in the world do won’t work for you unless you have the same kind of world-class marketing strategies budget. Coca-Cola spends over two billion dollars a year building and maintaining their brand.

What can you do?

Spend your marketing dollars where it will make a real difference. You want prospects to remember you and think of you when they need your products and services; isn’t it important to get them to remember the name of your company? The answer is NO. In the small business world, prospects don’t remember or rely on company names; they remember people’s names.

For example – a prospect visits your web site and, if you’ve planned the site well, they fill in a form and email their contact information to you. Follow up with them up a couple of minutes later, and they’ll be impressed, but I guarantee you that 9 out of 10 won’t remember the name of your site.

What’s the most effective way to build your brand and grow your business? Use this link to get the details >>

The fact of the matter is people don’t remember company names until they’ve become a client or customer. I learned this again the other day when Ros, who is responsible for affiliate relations for my company, was calling potential joint venture partners. When Ros called on my behalf, she’d say, “Hi, I’m calling from Marketing For Success about…” The consistent response was a long pause by the person on the other end of the phone. So she changed her lead-in; she mentioned my name. “Hi, Charlie Cook asked me to give you a call about…”

There was no pause then. Most people said they knew me, (even though I’d personally never talked to any of them), and Ros was able to get the conversation going.

The simple secret of successful small business branding is; don’t waste money trying to build your company’s name recognition. The brand you want to promote is YOU and the problems you solve.

Marketing yourself as the brand doesn’t mean you can’t grow into a big business. Oprah, Martha Stewart and many others have proved that many times over.

Want to grow your business? Use this link >>

Why is promoting yourself as the brand more effective than promoting your company name? Your prospects relate to and remember people more readily than they do abstract concepts like companies.

Your prospects don’t buy from you because you have a great company name; they buy from you because they know you and trust you as a person and a professional. What’s the most effective way for entrepreneurs and small business owners to generate more business?

Help your prospects get to know and trust you.

If you think that marketing has to be impersonal to be professional, think again. If you want people to get to know you and trust you, they need to know you as a person, not just as someone trying to make a sale.

I’m not suggesting that you reveal the intimate details of your life to your prospects. But while you’re explaining how you can solve their problems, do share information and stories about yourself as well as about your business.

For example, if you’ve been a regular subscriber to this newsletter, I bet you know at least one personal fact about me, Charlie Cook. You probably know I’m obsessed with skiing, have a ski home in Vermont and during the rest of the year I bike or kayak daily. I’ve shared stories about my family – my son and his endearing habits, my skinflint Dad and his leaky boat – and more.

How can you establish yourself as the brand and grow your business? Use this link to get the details >>

Ready to put your marketing into high gear to grow your business with new and effective marketing strategies? It’s easier than you think when you leverage your expertise and experiences to become the brand the people associate with a certain level of expertise and service.

Charlie
Marketing Strategies That Get… Results

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Need Marketing Novocaine? Use this marketing strategy…

By Charlie Cook   |   March 8, 2008

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

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Small Business Marketing Advertising Ideas That Work

By Charlie Cook   |   March 3, 2008

Have you ever spent money on an ad and gotten a limited response?

You’re not alone. Everyone who has ever advertised has run an ad that failed at least once. Doing it the first time is educational; running an ad that isn’t working again and again is throwing good money after bad.

Want to know how to write ads that attract twice as many buyers?

Use this link to find out which small business marketing ideas generate more leads and sales. >>

Want more small business marketing ideas? Use this link >>

Charlie
Business Small Business Marketing Ideas That Make You More Money

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How to Boost Your Affiliate Sales with Craigs List…

By Charlie Cook   |   February 29, 2008

If you sell affiliate products you know the key to generating sales is to maximize exposure of your affiliate ads. What’s the best way to do that?

We recently noticed one of our affiliates racing up the charts in sales and decided to take a closer look.

It turns out this affiliate found an ingenious way of promoting our products using her affiliate links. She puts the sales copy we provide to our affiliates to excellent use by posting ads on her local Craigs list message board.

—————
“Insider Secrets to 15 Seconds Marketing” by Charlie Cook
Reply to: sale-590266794@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-02-28, 5:24PM EST

Charlie Cook shows you how to stop begging for business and discover a simple way to double, triple or even quadruple your leads and your sales. He reveals how, using proven methods and techniques, you can dramatically change the effectiveness of your entire bricks and mortar and online business. Things like:

The shocking truth that 9 out of 10 business owners never find out about – and it’s costing them a fortune.

How to save $100,000+ a year on marketing costs using this simple little trick.

How to write better ad copy than Bill Gates and the Microsoft Corporation.

How to create award-winning headlines that can make your ads sizzle.

Power words that sell. Charlie reveals his favorites – amazing words that make people buy again and again.

Charlie cuts through the B.S. No filler, fluff, or boring stories. You get 100% practical ready-to-use tactics and strategies that work – no matter what kind of business you’re in. Please see details here >>
—————

Want to increase your affiliate sales? Do the same. Post your ads on Craigs List.

To your success,
Charlie
Marketing Ideas that work

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